• by Larry Dobrow , June 2, 2003

Calling from a golf course one day before he turns 50 - a milestone he plans to celebrate with a lavish bash for 100 pals at his home - Michael Carr, co-publisher of the soon-to-debut VEGAS Magazine, doesn't sound like a guy with pre-publication jitters.

"The people who saw the prototypes love it. High-end retailers love it. High-end diners love it," he crows. "Our first issue is going to break even and maybe even turn a small profit, which is unheard of for a consumer launch. Already 70 percent of our advertisers have signed a ten-issue contract."

Vegas will debut on June 26 with a guaranteed circulation of 80,000 and a 200-page issue, 85 or so of which will be ads. After the inaugural July/August issue, the magazine will shift to a ten-times-per-year schedule.

Editorially, it promises a glossy mix of fashion, nightlife, entertainment and what Carr calls "beautiful people." In other words, it celebrates everything that has come to be associated with the city of Las Vegas. Everything upscale, that is - the magazine won't have much to offer, say, sweatsuit-clad tourists from the midwest.

Vegas evolved very quickly. Carr had long wondered why nobody had developed a publication catering to the Vegas mindset. "Why hadn't it been done?," he asks, before answering his own question. "I can't answer that. I like to believe it's because we're smarter than everybody else, but I'm not sure that's entirely true."

In December 2002, he had a preliminary meeting with the Florida-based publishers of Ocean Drive magazine, a publication that does for South Beach what Carr hopes Vegas will do for his adopted hometown. By February, Vegas parent Greenspun Media Group (which owns several Vegas-based publications, the Las Vegas Sun, web site Vegas.com and news channel Las Vegas ONE) had inked a deal to co-produce the new title. Ocean Drive publisher Jerry Powers will serve as the co-publisher of Vegas; Ocean Drive will produce most of the editorial content, while the two companies will share ad-sales responsibilities.

"They [Ocean Drive] have a successful formula for the luxury-goods market," Carr says. "They're great at what they do. It's a good match."

Not surprisingly, given Las Vegas' boom over the last 15 years, the publication will attempt to appeal to both in-towners and well-heeled would-be visitors. Carr says approximately 30,000 copies will be distributed to Vegas visitors and residents ("the top 10 percent of hotel rooms in town will receive it"), with 50,000 more copies going to newsstands and subscribers located in "feeder markets" like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix and New York.

As for advertisers, the launch issue boasts a glut of luxury names: Rolls-Royce, GM's Hummer, Diane vonFurstenberg and Louis Vuitton. When asked about the companies and categories he'd like to see more of in future issues, Carr retorts, "We're going to have everybody. The people who aren't in the first issue, it was more their ad timing than anything else. We're going to deliver on the promise, just like Vegas does."

Spoken like a guy who expects, rather than hopes, to make a killing at the craps table.